Mike Taylor's personal copy of "Trio".

"(...) Anyway, even if recommended for years by Universal, today not even Pendulum is available in the shops, another bitter twist of fate making Taylor's work unobtainable for jazz fans. A work that someone, somewhere, seems to wish vanished with him in the Leigh-on-Sea waters...

All we can do is to embark on a probably fruitless search for one of the few original vinyl copies still around as some years ago Japanese jazz collector Koro Ito did, who has a collection of more than 18.000 long-playing records.

His demise which was likely to have been an accident, holds an unexpected coup de théatre. is really an incredible story, in line with the short history of Mike Taylor's life.

Steve Pank says: “It was when I was working at the Middle Earth Club and Mike Taylor was there. I knew that he had made some records. I said to him if you bring a copy of your record in maybe we can get it played on the sound system. Later he came in and handed me a copy of Trio. I never did get it played, and the next I heard he had committed suicide, so I could not return it”.

So Steve finds a copy of Taylor's album at home, and some years later, in 2013, he finds it again and asks Dave Tomlin if he wishes to have it.

“He replied that he didn't have much storage space and that he had a copy of Pendulum but didn't have a record player so he could not play it. His brother had gone to a lot of trouble to get hold of it for him, so he felt obliged to store it. I made the suggestion that he could sell it on eBay. Later he told me that his brother was quite adept at dealing on eBay and that his copy of Pendulum had been posted. It turned into a bidding war between two gentlemen one in France and one in Japan, and eventually Japanese man bought it for £400-£500”.

At this point Steve decides to sell Trio on eBay...

“Dave took it and sold it to the same Japanese man for around £200, and Dave offered me half of the proceeds. Part of the deal was that Dave would make me a copy on CD. This was the first time that Dave had heard Trio. He was amazed at how good it was...”.

So Koro Ito became the owner of the Trio which had been Mike's personal copy!

He says, “I nearly fell to the floor in a faint when I realised that Mike Taylor had actually touched it”."

(excerpt from my book "Out of Nowhere")

Here's below Mike's personal copy of the record (courtesy of Koro Ito):